New Mymeara FW book changes Eldar fluff?

[Hendarion]

From the War Walker entry in the fluff bit of the Eldar Codex p44

"...However, the pilot of a War Walker is not without protection, for the vehicle is equipped with an array of force fields that blur and distort its outline, making it at least as safe as a fully enclosed vehicle..."

I didn't mean to say you're wrong or lying or so. Just that this explanation is pure bull and the difference between opened topped or not is lame.

[TheDoctor]

Meh, just sharpie out the fluff that hints at losing technology, cause it's dumb. Exarch Bonesinger Tim, who never leaves the craftworld, can just sing up whatever the hell he wants to, and hes got thousands of years of practice doing it. When Tim dies of old age, the next Bonesinger Exarch will inherit all of Tim's knowledge, and all the knowledge of Tim's successors.

So, if anything, the Eldar should be GAINING technology.

[Fable]

I don't have that book yet, but from what I could see so far (the Phantom Titan's paint job and single pilot) the part of Eldar fluff which is most likely to have been heavily modified by FW is the part about the Fir Caurifel (the "Titanic Clans")...

Fir Caurifel are supposed to be independant, insular entities, big Craftworld having several Firs... So Eldar Titans painted in the color of the Craftworld instead of the Clan's are as bad fluff-wise, IMHO, as Imperial Titans painted in the colors of a Space Marine Chapter...

And the change from three pilots controlling the Titan in unison through the Carrecenad (a huge Spirit-Stone containing the spirits of the former pilots) to a single pilot is, still IMHO, a big loss...

But I guess FW thought it was too "complex".

Edit: This is my post #404... Will it show as an error?

Well, even in epic many, if not most, of the Titans were painted in accordance with their craftworld while their banners displayed their clan, craftworld and weaponry and any other heraldry that is deemed appropriate.

However IA11 doesn't so much change the clan fluff as much as it ignores it completely. For my phantom I created a clan from the ground up as there isn't any fluff I could find about the Ulthwe clans, but from what I could find it most certainly is not a sin to paint them in the craftworld colors or out of them. Though, I will say I may have missed some fluff that creeped up in some small fluff blurb.

I had been really looking forward to more expansive phantom fluff about the clans and such, but they let that chance slip by. However, while they seem to have abandoned the notions of triplets (which are still in Path of the Seer as Phantom Pilots) they did update the language from the original description they put up on-line as an "Exarch" to a "Steersman" in the book.

[eldargal]

I really disagree, I thought it was brilliant:

The entire war is a giant feint to allow the Farseer and bodyguard revive the Phoenix Lord and his Aspect, it really illustrated how nothing is as it seems when th Eldar go to war.

I do agree that the lack of information on Corsairs were annoying when pages were devoted to stupid Space Wolves, like we don't hear enough about them

But yes, I was a bit disappointed about the IA. It doesn't really add any detail to the Eldar way of the war, doesn't really give the Corsairs a distinct personality, but instead keeps things pretty vague and non-descriptive, as GW publications are wont to do. I expected more of Forge World.

[BigBarryJazz]

How is it possible to lose the knowledge of how to construct something when you can literally ask your dead how it was done?

[Lupe]

How is it possible to lose the knowledge of how to construct something when you can literally ask your dead how it was done?

Because your dead might not have possessed that knowledge in the first place. Not all Eldar walk a particular path, and even those who do might not go far enough to learn how to create everything the path has to offer. Some designs might conceivably be restricted to the foremost specialists. Now, if enough of the guys that posses that particular knowledge are lost, they may end up losing the whole design.

Or, alternatively, they could ask the dead for a solution, but the specialized facilities required to manufacture something are either unavailable or come at a high cost, that would be better spent on other, more efficient technologies.

[Vandur Last]

That's like saying that the USA doesn't know how to build an Aircraft carrier because the guys who built the last one died.
The Eldar are advanced, not dumb. They should have some means of strong information such as computers or in the infinity circuit.

Also I found the "it's all a feint to get a Phoenix Lord back" to be inappropriate to the scale of the battle. That's story would've sounded less dumb if it was a small 40k battle, but it becomes silly to waste so many lives, ships, titans and super heavies just to get your Aspect Lord back.

Sort of on topic I found it annoying that the Eldar kept using thier superior speed and manuevrability to charge headlong into the IG gun line. I was hoping for something more like the Tau did in Taros, showing that there can be more to maneuvering than is possible on a 40k table.

[Solonor]

Also I found the "it's all a feint to get a Phoenix Lord back" to be inappropriate to the scale of the battle. That's story would've sounded less dumb if it was a small 40k battle, but it becomes silly to waste so many lives, ships, titans and super heavies just to get your Aspect Lord back.

Sort of on topic I found it annoying that the Eldar kept using thier superior speed and manuevrability to charge headlong into the IG gun line. I was hoping for something more like the Tau did in Taros, showing that there can be more to maneuvering than is possible on a 40k table.

Although i enjoyed reading the story i too agree with Vandur Las points, the kind of operation needed to revive the Phoenix Lord should be more like a special Ops Eldar team appearing near the complex retrieve the Lord and dissapear, something i think Eldar could do without needing a fullscale planetary invasion to be the "distraction".

[Hendarion]

Well, I know how to build Software. I know how Windows operates to the core and such stuff. That doesn't mean I can create one myself or a big group of people on my knowledge will be able to reconstruct Windows 95 exactly the way it was. Windows 95 is just 17 years old and humanity didn't suffer from a destruction of all the core worlds. I'm not sure a guy with a laptop on board of a holiday-cruiser-ship would be able to build up something like Windows 95 either. He lacks various things to complete them.
Bonesinger Exarch or not, but even those guys need training and some systems might be lost indeed. What's the problem? The Eldar suffered from their fall. Why should all technology have survived? And actually we know for fact that it didn't, because Titans had been PRESITGE objects in the past, not used weapons! Wars had been fought autonomously by drones, same like every labor work. Not by living Eldar and not by Wraith-constructs either. One might now argue that Craftworlders don't use that because it lead to the Fall in the first place. Well... I wonder what's better, sending Guardians to the front or drones. I guess even Eldar would be smart enough to differ between dire need and pure lazyness. So... the tech *must* be lost or I overestimate the smartness of Eldar by far.

[Shamana]

Also I found the "it's all a feint to get a Phoenix Lord back" to be inappropriate to the scale of the battle. That's story would've sounded less dumb if it was a small 40k battle, but it becomes silly to waste so many lives, ships, titans and super heavies just to get your Aspect Lord back.

Sort of on topic I found it annoying that the Eldar kept using thier superior speed and manuevrability to charge headlong into the IG gun line. I was hoping for something more like the Tau did in Taros, showing that there can be more to maneuvering than is possible on a 40k table.

Yeah, the scale was a bit off. If they had cut, say, 80% of the action on the book and left it with

aspects/rangers/corsairs sabotage the sensor net, cause enough of a mess for Imperial unit X (currently stationed near the tomb) to investigate, break in - sure. Or heck, just let the corsairs loose, throw everything at this tomb, rig everything to blow up so no one knows just what happened, and get away before the Imperials can mount a response. However, the Eldar started a big war, escalated slowly, and for a long time fought in a way that is not to their strengths - open battles that do not exploit their huge advantage in mobility. The irony is that iirc initially the IG are outnumbered, yet manage to hold on by superior and unconventional tactics, normally the Eldar schtick, as the eldar tend to most of the time rush in at full speed and hope for the best (a.k.a. Orky style). The best part, however, is how the race with precognition manages to attack just when a) there is a brilliant commander just happening to be around, who can rally and organize the defense, b) there is an Inquisitor nearby who can give said brilliant commander the authority to bypass bureaucracy and rank, and c) a host of Space Wolves and some Titans relatively close. As in, the farseers managed to pick pretty much the worst possible situation to commit their forces, apparently to give the Imperials a fair chance. Yeah. So... the start was ok, the ending wasn't too bad, but everything in between made me think that the Eldar are just some space punks with a sugar high and a death wish.

@ Hendarion: I'm ok with technology from before the Fall being lost (although the craftworlds were also involved with manufacture as well as commerce), but not so much with post-fall tech. If anything, since the Fall the Eldar should have been consolidating their resources at the craftworlds, scavenging materials and equipment scattered across different planets or wrecks, as well as occasionally either founding something new or adapting old technology to their existing material base. "Losing technology that cannot be replicated" is the Imperial schtick, although they aren't exactly good at keeping to it with all those toys they are constantly getting . The Eldar should have spent the last 15 millenia trying to clean up all their old caches/ruins/ships they can get their hands on and moving everything up on the craftworlds, not losing what little they did pick up before they left.

[eldargal]

So a virtually immortal warrior and his cadre of elite warriors isn't worth mounting a large scale expedition to retrieve? Really not seeing the logic there. I felt the scale was right, they couldn't risk the IG figuring out what was going on so they had to launch a massive offensive to keep their attention fully occupied. In return one of a handful of demi-gods of war is returned to the Eldar people. Honestl I think most of ghe criticism is nitpicking for the sake of it. It could have been much, much worse far more easily then it could have been any better.

I mean if they had just had a spec-ops component and some small scale attacks, if anyone had figured out what had been going on and been able to send troops to stop the Eldar getting out of the caverns, Irrilyth could conceivably have been captured by the Imperium while still 'deceased'. That woudl have been a far greater disaster than losing a few thousand Eldar and a bit of materiel.

[Shamana]

Basically my problem is that the Eldar didn't play to their strengths enough (surprise, precognition, maneuverability), seemed to be the "waves of attack" race so the Imperial colonel (or general, or whatever) could be the tactical genius who saves the day with limited resources, and essentially committed their troops in a limited way so the fight could, I guess, be fair - only coming in full strength when the Imperials were ready, delaying their titans until the Imperial ones come, etc. The last bit was great if you want a balanced campaign, but why in Cthulhu's left-most tentacle would the Eldar ever be playing fair when they have the initiative? Also, they were led by farseers, including one with plenty of command experience, yet they managed to attack at nearly the most opportune moment for the Imperium and it seems nearly everything that happened and was not completely obvious caught them by surprise. There was also no mention of them using their orbital fleet supremacy that they enjoyed during the early stages to their advantage. There is only one mention of an orbital bombardment and it's from the Imperials - curiously enough, from a period when they were pressed hard in space, before the arrival of the Space Wolves and the sector fleet.

As I see it, the eldar initially started with limited covert ops, then moved to skirmishes, and escalated several times instead of committing at first before the enemy was prepared. That only makes sense if the eldar themselves had to change their plans - if they themselves were insufficiently prepared. But why wouldn't they be? They have their diviners, their scouts (rangers), they have the initiative and caught the Imperials by surprise. If they had all their forces, why didn't they, say, hit the Guard installations before the defenders could mobilize, cripple their communication HQ (before or just after taking most of the sensor net offline) and finish their job before the defenders rally? They started a conventional war, hitting the enemy where he was strongest. It is as if they were fighting to lose, just so a small team could take a great risk to try and pull it off.

Apart from the initial preparations and the end assault, they could have well been orks. It was like for the most part, the Imperials were the designated protagonists and had to show off their things, the Eldar were just the dance partners.

Nitpicking? You could call it that, but as I was reading the book it kept bothering me that the Eldar doing things that made no sense, from their point of view. Their timing was off, the tactics for the war itself seemed improper, and they sustained casualties that could be avoided. It just didn't feel like what I imagined Eldar to fight like.

[eldargal]

Well the Imperium was the designated protagonist, and they always will be in an IA book. The story is told the Imperiums perspective, pieced together from what records they could find and probably a good bit of conjecture. So I stand by what I said, it could have been a whole lot worse under those circumstances. Sadly FW say they will never write a book from a Xenos perspective. The Eldar achieved their objectives and left, neither side was made to look stupid, I call it a win. There were some annoyances, but honestly I just can't see the scale of the engagement being one of them, especially since most of the other non-GW Eldar fluff is very small scale indeed.

[Lupe]

Thought for the day: There are many ways to damnation, but the swiftest of them all lies in trying to understand the xenos' mind

[Formerly Wu]

Sort of on topic I found it annoying that the Eldar kept using thier superior speed and manuevrability to charge headlong into the IG gun line. I was hoping for something more like the Tau did in Taros, showing that there can be more to maneuvering than is possible on a 40k table.

I was also pretty disappointed by the lack of nuance shown in the book, especially when going back and re-reading the Vraks series. Most of the battles break down to a muddle of "and there was a huge fight with tons of shooting and stuff," as opposed to gritty descriptions of individual units in battle. Strategic maps, while pretty and 3-D, are just a vague series of arrows, and the characters do little except sit around and watch (the inquisitor in the final scene is a particularly egregious example... get off the MIU and shoot some xenos, man!).

That said, I do think the scale was about right. The corsairs are not the most controlled of Eldar forces, after all, so unleashing them in full force probably made for a better distraction.

[Khorneguy]

There's also the fact that Eldar prophecy is far from infaliable. They might not have seen everything they need to. Read ADB's Void Stalker if you want an example

[Idaan]

Thought for the day: There are many ways to damnation, but the swiftest of them all lies in trying to understand the xenos' mind

The Eldar mind, while similar in general to the human mind, is far more inclined towards extremes. Because of this Eldar are more intelligent but also far more intense than humans. Although an Eldar and a human can both feel grief or joy, the Eldar's experience is likely to be far more extreme.

They're not randumb. They're similar to humans, only drawn towards obsessive-compulsive behaviour which they keep in check through the Path process. There's no reason for them not to use tactics or behave logically. And the "lol, they're alien" argument only seems to be used to justify Eldar losing because they behaved like idiots.

[Lupe]

Not exactly what I meant.

Eldar are a whole different civilization. While things that are tactically viable for us are generally tactically viable to them as well, I was more referring to their whole set of values. It's precisely their tendency towards extremes that I'm talking about.

For us, it makes no sense that the Eldar are going through all that trouble to accomplish their aims. But to them, achieving the objective of *THAT SPECIFIC* campaign means a lot more than it would to a human. They're willing to go way further than humans would, because they are instilled with the mindset that a Phoenix Lord is the key to their salvation as a race. They would rather kill millions of humans rather than have a small band of Eldar suffer harm. So whatever gets them to actually place their own lives on the line in such a crude fashion has got to be very, very important. Big enough to override their sense of self preservation.

To summarize my point, this is a very scaled up version of an Aspect Warrior sacrificing himself so that a Phoenix Lord may reincarnate.

[eldargal]

Which they didn't do. The Eldar deployed a large enough force to force the Imperium to deply all its forces, preventing them from intercepting the Eldar revival squad. They drew out said Imperium forces, then fell back drawing Imperial forces further away from the true prize before up and leaving when they achieved their objective. The very opposite of randumb.

They're not randumb. They're similar to humans, only drawn towards obsessive-compulsive behaviour which they keep in check through the Path process. There's no reason for them not to use tactics or behave logically. And the "lol, they're alien" argument only seems to be used to justify Eldar losing because they behaved like idiots.

[thor2006]

Which they didn't do. The Eldar deployed a large enough force to force the Imperium to deply all its forces, preventing them from intercepting the Eldar revival squad. They drew out said Imperium forces, then fell back drawing Imperial forces further away from the true prize before up and leaving when they achieved their objective. The very opposite of randumb.

At the earliest the vast majority of the IOM forces were weeks and month away from being deployed.
A period of weeks passed before the main attack and the moment the IOM sensors were brought down. Plenty of time to have their huge army poped out of the webway closest from the phoenix lord location and take the phoenix lord tomb and leave, before the IOM can mount an effective counterattack. Minimal loses for the eldar, IOM, less bad blood and brigdes burned between the IOM and eldar, allowing the eldar to use the IOM in the future more likely.
What was written the eldar recovery of the phoenix lord was a near loss, the eldar lost lots of their warriors and warmachines, and created unneded bad blood between the IOM and eldar making future relashions more impossible. And all this without being needed for the success of the recovery operation.

It is like the authors want their cake and eat the cake. They want big battles between forces with almost even odds of success, even if realistically ,because of how their army operates , one side would achieve their objectives and leave without the second side being able to do anything to hurt or stop.

Realistically with the eldar advantages they would always win against the IOM on the ground.
And the writers couldn't find reasons for the eldar to delay the completion of the objective(that can be completed in hours) for couple of weeks so that the IOM can bring their forces forward. It is like the eldar stayed to try to kill as many humans as possible even if this was not needed or counterproductive.